To ask your help for a character's occuption (late 1950s) for my novel?

[Pushpins40]

I'm stuck. It's a minor point but I'm on the upteenth draft of this effing novel with a deadline looming. Google isn't helping, so I wondered if Mumsnet would?

A man, London, 1958, needs a fairly dull office job. Something that would be quite well paid. I thought accountant but I'm not sure I want something professional. I thought managing a department in a refrigeration company (which I thought might be growing post war). But my tired brain is addled.

Any suggestions welcome! Thanks so much.

Would an accountant have needed/done a degree in the 1950s or would they have learnt it on the job? Genuinely don’t know.

A shipping clerk mat work if something prevented him from moving to (say) a position like a Purser with P&O. My mum had to do two years at head office before even being considered for active service with the Merchant Navy, and if you didn't meet the grade, a desk job was your end result.... Forever! That was in 1960. Thankfully she got a job on the Canberra, met my dad who got on in Australia as crew, and the rest is history!!! Good luck with your novel!

Sorry, see PPs accountant relative did have a degree.

Stockbroker.

Not on the stock exchange, in an office buying and selling shares on behalf of clients, dealing in actual paper certificates.

My mum's first job leaving school in 1955 was as an office worker in a stockbroker's in Huddersfield of all places.

SashH - thank you. Would he be v wealthy? Or just comfortable?

Station Master at one of the big stations? They would be in charge of hundreds of people somewhere like Liverpool Street or Paddington, so pretty senior.

Relative worked at this company.

As you can see, they had locations all over, and in fact he worked at one UK location and three overseas locations (in the country he was born in, so no "expat package"). Also means his degree was from "foreign" – I don't know if that matters?

I knew him slightly in person, but I've been researching the family history so happen to know quite a lot about him.

He was comfortably off in many ways. The children went through private school, but only with the help of bursaries. His wife became terminally ill (while overseas, no NHS), seriously affecting the family's financial situation both because of healthcare bills and because of childcare.

But he recovered from that situation – partly by remarriage.

He was definitely middle class: owned his own home, a car and a few shares; had at least two children go on to university. The family could afford to sail to between the UK and his birth country to visit family every now and then – although I know he combined it with work trips.

Thing is, if your character went to university... how did he get there in the first place? Was there family money? Doesn't have to be a lot, just a property here, or some shares there, or a legacy from gt-aunt Mabel. And his wife may be a similar class and have similar resources knocking about in the background.

For people in England (Scotland a little different) who came from families which could afford university in the 1920s, their income in the 1950s may well not be purely the result of their job...

What did your character do during WW2? That might have some bearing on his post-war career?

Shipping clerk or ship broker's clerk is not a bad suggestion either.

I've got some of those in my family files, too. Some seem to have done OK – one in the C19th rose to become a shipowner and eventually owned a whole shipping line. But there's obviously room for more humble characters. Don't know about degrees, though.

I'll dig out what I know...

Oh god, yes. The war is likely to have had a huge effect on him and on his career.

Fighting and POW experiences aside, people qualified in new skills, lived new places and mixed with others whom they'd never previously have got to know. Both World Wars were like social and educational bombs in the UK (and elsewhere).

My accountant relative was an NCO in the war, not an officer, and I think was a driver. He was certainly front line troops, because he was taken POW.

His second wife was a war widow. I imagine she was getting a widow's pension, but would guess that stopped when she remarried.

Don't know about WW2, but after WW1 a lot of men were awarded war pensions for illness and injury, graded at 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 disablement (may be more grades). They were often able to work, but the pension helped with the fact that they were less employable in the job market, or could no longer do their former trade, or couldn't work as many hours.

(I know there was an intent to do similar in WW2, because it's what preserved so many military records. In 1940, a large sample of service records of men receiving WW1 pensions had been sent from the War Office to the Pensions Office, to do calculations on expected payouts after WW2 – so didn't get burnt to a crisp the night the War Office Record Store got a direct hit from a German incendiary bomb...)

Could he be the manager of the Kodak factory in Harrow (northwest London)? The factory closed a couple (?) of years ago, but it was thriving in the 1950s.

Or, if not manager, maybe the financial director - they might have been called chief accountants in those days?

Construction was booming in the 1950s, so perhaps an office based project engineer or a draughsman, although I think the latter may have been an apprenticeship type role? Google would know!

1958, nationalised industry in all its pomp, head offices in London. Plenty of pre-war 'officer class' middle managers. If he graduated in the late 1920's engineering was seen as a profession on a par with law so an engineer with the NCB, CEGB, BR etc?

I think this has been said above but for a man to have been to University in the late 20s early 1930s he would almost never be in a blue collar job in the 1950s. The only exception would often be academic roles so for example, your man ends up with a scholarship or assisted university place in the late 1920s and then enters an academic life. This gives you lots of possibilities for his job such as School Master at a public school, school bursar, academic researcher (in something dull!) or a museum curator etc. The good thing about any of the public school roles is that they would likely come with accommodation/cottage/mews etc in some schools so you are able to place the character in as comfortable position as you like. For example young officers posted into regiments and living in Royal properties. Sorry if this is a bit babbling!

Solicitor,dull well paid profession and due to confidentiality of clients no need to talk about it.

Civil Servant can cover any grade/salary really. Same was true when I worked there in 1990's.

Wwork of civil servant in IR in those days work be having meetings, possibly with Ministers and others. Drafting policy notes, responding to correspondence, dealing with memos. So clearing work done by the junior staff. All was done by circulating memos person to person. Postboys would deliver and pick up a few times a day. Tea trolleys pushed through twice a day for tea at 10.30 and 3pm. National archives site will help I suspect and legislation.gov.uk site has a copy of the then new 1950 Finance Act. Watch the Gary Oldman version of Tinker Tailor, that will approximate it. Good luck!

OK, looking over my shipping clerks...

My records are almost all late C19th, so probably not that much use.

Shipping clerk, and commercial clerk, mercantile clerk, etc, seems to have been fairly low-level positions at that time, definitely not requiring a degree. So it might be a position which a reliable person held all their life, or it might be effectively an apprenticeship for a protegé of the business owner to learn the ropes before rising to partnership or striking out on their own.

Sorry, really don't know what this means for your character in 1958. Apart from anything else, the business world was changing by the 1950s: becoming more professional, and a bit less about family businesses trying to place useless family members.

Working at the Labour exchange. The precursor to the modern job centre, it first appeared to supercede the old-style hiring fairs and allow people to find work more easily.

Maybe he was an engineer in the war - then carried on in management. Lots of companies changed their product after manufacturing aircraft etc in the war. English Rose kitchens were very early fitted kitchens made in an aircraft factory - they are prized nowadays - and made of curvy metal (google them)

If he's a civil servant you could do worse than watch 'the Ipcress File' for reference. Lots of offices in central london - grand buildings and not-so-grand office equipment etc.

Also, wierdly - watch 'The Prisoner' as that has lots of civil service offices and street scenes in London. You could park in the circle where HMRC is now. here is the sattelite

Solicitor, barrister or even a judge. All necessitated degrees

A man in his forties could have easily gained a degree after the war. Can’t remember the name of it but there was a scheme for putting ex-servicemen through uni after the war. My father retrained and took his second BA after the war this way.

I don’t think normal people went to uni in the 50s. It was very much the place for posh people with connections and inheritances and country houses I think. Someone with a boring office job certainly wouldn’t have been supporting a daughter at uni - she’d have been working in a factory from age 14.

Father in law came out of the army in ‘46, having been an officer finishing (and marrying) in India and went to work as a senior manager in a large battery factory... old boys network from WW2 and university helped. Had a lovely Home Counties detached house, car, occasional visits to the USA on business.